Australia’s prime ministers have a mixed record in promoting the country’s creativity.

Andrew Fisher set up an advisory board for art purchases by the new Commonwealth government, Alfred Deakin a literary fund for needy writers. Robert Menzies backed the creation of a national library in Canberra, proposed a politically correct academy of the arts to put down the threat of modernism and rejected the British postwar vision of a publicly funded arts council to stimulate and showcase artists and art making. John Gorton initiated new arts funding and structural arrangements for film.